Grand Strategy Annex

25th April 2014

Post with 27 notes

Political Ends and Political Means

More than a year ago in A Philosophical Disconnect I wrote about the almost total disconnect between philosophy of law and political philosophy, which seems like a strange and inexplicable ellipsis if we think of law as the practical implementation of politics. Law and politics might be understood as the practice and theory, respectively, of human society, or as means and ends. In either case, law and politics ought to be seen as a single, unified approach from a philosophical point of view.

On second thought, I have come to realize that politics can be implemented in more than one way. If we take the famous observation of Clausewitz that War is a mere continuation of policy by other means, this is equivalent to saying that war is an implementation of politics by non-political means. Clausewitz implies a relationship between political ends and political means, and asserts that political ends are sometimes to be obtained by military means, which he clearly recognizes as being distinct from the ordinary political means of obtaining political ends. What are the ordinary means for obtaining political ends? The political process itself, which is a process of making, enforcing, and interpreting laws in accordance with contemporary standards of procedural rationality.

Given, then, that we can obtain political ends by legal means or military means, that means that there is an intrinsic relationship both between politics and law on the one hand, while on the other hand an equal and also intrinsic relationship between politics and military tactics and strategy, which are the implementation of military thought. From a purely theoretical viewpoint, then – that is to say, from a philosophical viewpoint – we should expect to find a close relationship between philosophy of law and political philosophy on the one while, and an equally close relationship on the other hand between the philosophy of war and political philosophy.

Thus the disconnect mentioned above between philosophy of law and political philosophy is actually a twofold disconnect, because there is also a disconnect between political philosophy and the philosophy of war, or the philosophy of strategy and tactics, in so far as this latter exists. It is at least arguable that the second disconnect is the more profound, and therefore the greater ellipsis, because so little has been written on the philosophy of war. In addition to the works of Clausewitz himself, I own a small library of the few titles I have been able to find on the philosophy of war, such as Waging War: A Philosophical Introduction by Ian Clark and Barbarous Philosophers by Christopher Coker, and a few other titles. It is not a large collection. There is an enormous literature on war per se, but very little in the way of philosophical analysis of war. 

The want of an adequate philosophy of war is a neglect that cuts two ways, if we take into account Foucault’s inversion of Clausewitz (what I call Foucault’s Corollary) that I have discussed on several occasions: politics is a mere continuation of war by other means (cf. Foucault on Strategy, The Valorization of Protest, and A Clausewitzean Conception of Philosophy).

If politics is not only an end variously implemented by law and by strategy, but also a means to implementing the ends of war, then we can see that political philosophy and philosophy of law stand in a relation of mutual implication, as also political philosophy and philosophy of war. This also means that philosophy of law and philosophy of war stand in relation to each other at very least transitively through political philosophy, and perhaps also more directly.

An instance of their more direct relationship has been the attempt to formulate laws of war, which, as we also know, are spectacularly ineffective, as war rapidly escalates beyond anything anticipated by law, and war often occurs in a total vacuum of law, as when different civilizations with nothing else in common are forced to settle their differences through war because they have no other common framework within which to resolve conflicts.

While we tend to view Clausewitz’s equivalency of war and politics, as well as Foucault’s Corollary, in a negative light, we ought also to see the possibility of bringing the insights of strategy (which has been intensively studied, because it bears upon the existential viability of societies faced by conflict) to bear upon political and legal questions, and I believe that very little has been done from this perspective, philosophically speaking. There is a great opportunity here for the philosophically adept strategist of the strategically-minded philosopher.

Tagged: Carl von Clausewitzphilosophy of lawpolitical philosophyprocedural rationalityFoucaultMichel FoucaultClausewitzphilosophy of warlaws of warpolitics